


Dark Without Dawn

by biggestbaddestwolf



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Genre: Force-Sensitive Poe Dameron, Gen, M/M, The Dark Side of the Force, dark!poe dameron
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-19 15:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5971507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggestbaddestwolf/pseuds/biggestbaddestwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a battle, Poe's ship crashes on an old, feral planet. Injured, he's forced to survive while the planet itself seems to be out for his blood. He finds shelter in a strange, centuries old temple- but little does Poe know, he's at the heart of the planet's corruption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

*0*

 

According to Black One’s instruments, it wasn’t the storm clouds that made Poe crash. It was the planet’s gravity.

 

He shouldn’t have been pulled in, was the first panicked thought. It didn’t make sense; he had experience piloting through lightning storms, he could do this. Not in his sleep, of course, but he’d successfully done it before. He couldn’t figure out how everything had gone so wrong.

 

He’d been bait, the best pilot suited for drawing out First Order fighters and getting away clean. The ambush seemed to have gone off well, although he’d been mid-escape while the rest of the starfighters had converged on his tail. They’d done a lot of damage, he was sure of it- he vaguely recalled letting out a hoot of laughter, of hearing it echoed back to him from his fellow pilots.

 

But there were several fighters still coming after him, and he remembered taking a hit. He remembered starting the jump to light speed…

 

Things blurred funny there, running on automatic. He remembered cursing under his breath when the Black One shook. Furious movements formed less from conscious thought and more from muscle memory, his hands knowing more about where he was heading than he did. He programmed in coordinates, he must have-

 

-But the planet rocked by lightning storms was not a place that he knew. His navigational system was screwed, broken pixels that meant nothing. BB-8 was talking to him, and Poe attempted to calm the droid down, assure him that everything would be fine, that Poe had it under control.

 

“Come on baby, we got this, we got this,” Poe was muttering to himself.

 

The Black One spiraled down to the planet anyway.

 

*1*

 

Poe woke up to a sharp, agonizing pain in his side, and a frantically beeping BB-8. “It’s all good,” he coughed out, wincing as he twisted his torso trying to detach himself from the cockpit. “Still beating the odds buddy.”

 

In spite of the throbbing in his side, he managed a laugh of disbelief. He was moving, all his body parts appeared to be attached, and the ship seemed to still be functioning…

 

He undid his harness, leaned forward- regretted the action immediately- and started a diagnostic. He’d worried about the pain in a minute, he had to know if the Black One was okay, if he could either send out a distress signal or get her back up in the air.

 

“Fuck!” He shouted as the results came back, punching the wall of the cockpit.

 

Two of the starfighter’s four laser cannons were completely wrecked. There were issues with the engine, of course, but those Poe could fix with a little assistance from BB-8. That wasn’t what pissed him off.

 

No communications. No hyperdrive. No escape.

 

The next step getting up and out of the cockpit, figuring out his surroundings. Just because he couldn’t take to the sky right that moment didn’t mean that there wasn’t somewhere on this planet where someone could help him. He just had to figure out where he was. Poe checked for his blaster and then finally- almost closing his eyes, not really wanting to see the damage- checked his side. He sighed in relief; he wasn’t bleeding, although he could feel the entire side blossoming into terrible bruising. He was fairly certain nothing was broken, but the injury was already impeding his ability to move.

 

He snatched up his emergency kit- there were flares, there was a rebreather in there, and there was first aid- and then rescued BB-8 from his perch atop the starfighter. BB-8 was as distressed as Poe had ever heard her, and she rolled around him as if she wanted to attempt to evaluate the damage.

 

“We’ve gotta scout out the area, okay? Just keep quiet for a little while, and then you can get on my case later,” Poe assured her.

 

There was thunder and lightning in the distance, but fear of the storm didn’t explain the twisting in Poe’s gut.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe is attacked in the wild

*2*

 

The planet was full of sharp, unexpected cliffs, sudden drops and little water-none of it looked drinkable-, and Poe had wandered too far away from  _ Black One _ . He checked in with BB-8 constantly, who was attempting to keep track of where they’d come from, so that they could easily get back to the ship. Poe was mostly certain they’d be able to get back; he was working hard to convince himself of it.

There were things he should have been doing. He should have worked on the engines a little, seen if he could get communications up and running. They should have patrolled a small radius around the crash site instead of wandering further and further across the dry, desert planet.

The entire planet felt off. Thicker than it should. The shadows were too dark and looking at them made something akin to panic well up in Poe’s chest. He dodged them when he could, avoided spots on the ground with a determination he couldn’t explain, except that the ground there was strangely untouched by creatures, and yet still blasted by storm and debris. The planet clung to him, weighed on him, and it wasn’t just the extra weight of gravity.

It was hot enough that Poe ended up undoing the top half of his flight suit, tying the sleeves around his waist just below the main source of his pain. The readjustment gave him the opportunity to lift his t-shirt and check out how bad of a state he was in. He looked for only a few seconds before re-tucking in the shirt and making the choice not to think about his side, which had turned a deep, ugly purple.

“ Nope, it’s all fine, moving on,” Poe muttered to himself.

He wasn’t sure what he was moving on  _ too _ anymore though. He simply knew he had to keep moving forward, that if he kept going his situation would be fixed…by what, he didn’t know yet. It was like knowing when was the right time for a sharp turn while being chased by a tie fighter, or knowing exactly how far past its limit a ship could be pushed before everything went to crap.

There were voices suddenly. Poe put a hand out in front of BB-8, who nearly rolled into his hand before jerking still. Poe strained to listen; the sound faded at first, as if the act of listening had caused the sound to flee. Then the sound came back, still too faint for him to make out the exact words. It was one voice, one that reminded him of his grandmother’s voice calling him in to eat.

He moved towards the voice, cautiously, blaster in hand, crouched. He didn’t think he’d have to shoot the speaker- he wasn’t keen on shooting old people out in the desert, but she wasn’t necessarily alone. He thought of First Order soldiers at distant listening posts, and of local militias that wouldn’t look kindly on a lone pilot from either side of this war.

Poe’s fingers gripped the blaster tighter as he got closer. His heart pounded with the possibilities. The adrenaline made him hear sounds wrong- that the voice was speaking  _ to _ him, perhaps, that this was not a muttered monologue but instead a distant lecture that he was straining to understand. Until he heard a single word, sharp and clear.

_ Fight. _

The voice vanished. Poe jumped from both the command and the voice’s sudden absence. He couldn’t describe the absence as purely auditory; he felt it in his chest, as if without the sound, his panic had collapsed and crashed in to fill the space. It was as if the command had pushed every emotion he’d been trying to resist succumbing to into the center of his chest.

And then he heard the hissing.

  
  


The creature that launched itself from the darkness was over half a meter taller than Poe, and he didn’t want to estimate how much heavier and broader. What Poe could make out in the darkness appeared humanoid, definitely reptilian, and  _ giant _ .

Poe, managed to dodge the first lunge, dropping down and rolling out of the way on the ground. “I don’t want to-” Poe started, but the words stuck in his throat, and his blaster was up in the air. He took the shot, but the creature was fast. Poe heard the blast hit something- a rock likely- behind the creature, the sizzling sound of the blaster shot almost hidden by the snarling of Poe’s assailant.

It wasn’t a struggle so much as it was a maddening, sloppy, desperate dance. The beast was so much larger than Poe that Poe was sure that if a hit connected, he would be done for. Poe continued to quickly dodge, to attempt to get enough distance between him and the beast that he could take another shot.

This wasn’t a food hunt, Poe knew. Poe was fighting back too much that. Maybe Poe had stepped into this creature’s terrority- but Poe had  _ heard _ a voice, another person’s voice, only meters away. There was no screaming, no fear in the voice, not that Poe could tell. And there was no fresh blood in the air, not yet. So if it wasn’t territory…

The beast let out an ear-splitting roar, so loud that Poe dropped the blaster to protect his ear drums. Around him the ground and rocks shook. The air vibrated, buzzed around Poe and grew even heavier. Made him sway on his feet. The beast reacted far faster than Poe was able to pull himself together, and Poe’s torso exploded in pain as he was easily swatted to the side.

The bruising was now a giant claw mark, and the bleeding was quickly destroying what remained of the shirt. Poe’s fingers curled as he clawed against the sandy dirt, trying to gain some sort of purchase so that he could get up.

_ Fight _ .

He heard it again as he felt the beast approach him. The previous panic had coalesced into something else: Poe shook and felt his muscles tighten. He refused to die here, on a nameless planet, against this beast. What he was feeling couldn’t be called defiance or confidence. He knew something was going to die in the next few seconds, and it wasn’t going to be him.

Poe’s lip curled as his hand found the handle of his blaster- had he really fallen so close to it? It didn’t make sense, but he didn’t care about the logic of it. He cared about the fact that adrenaline was trying to suppress the pain that threatened to topple him as he narrowly avoided another assault. He cared about how the grip of the blaster felt in his hands.

He was in a state of hyper-awareness that he usually only achieved sitting a cockpit. The beast hadn’t gotten any slower, but it felt as if time had. It was the same as dodging tie fighters and swooping past laser cannons.

He took the shot. He took another shot. He kept going, feeling that same hyper-awareness hit a crescendo. He was aware not only of the beast hitting the ground, but of every rock underneath them. He was aware of a dark warping of air surrounding the beast- surrounding the entire damn planet. He kept shooting.

There was a beeping sound, and Poe swung around, blaster still in hand. It was BB-8, rolling out from behind boulders.

As the pain of his wounds suddenly rose up to meet him, Poe realized he’d never forgotten about BB-8 before.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe has a conversation with someone who isn't there.

*3*

 

He was starting to see things. People.

Finn.

Poe had collapsed under the weight of his injuries, the pain making it impossible to move for what might have been twenty minutes, or might have been hours. He considered asking BB-8, who had hovered over and around him nervously since he’d fallen over, but Poe didn’t want to know.

There was a lot he wanted to know. Where he was. If he’d manage to make it off this planet. Who it was that he’d heard speaking before and during the fight- was he already losing it then, some sort of feverish hallucination, or had he only started just now, as he dragged himself up into a sitting position against a boulder, staring across at Finn, sitting on a rock.

“You know,” Poe’s throat was more hoarse than he’d realized, “You’re much cuter when you’re not a figment of my imagination.” BB-8 chirped. “Give me a minute to talk to myself, and I’ll be fine, BB.”

He’d hoped, by acknowledging it out loud, that the hallucination would fall apart, fade, but it didn’t work. Instead, he was staring, not at Finn, but Finn as he showed up in Poe’s dreams, dressed in all white except for Poe’s jacket. The difference was in subtlety of expression; in the real world, Finn’s full lips and dark eyes hid nothing, had layers upon layers of emotion just ready to be read across them. The slightest worry or fear or happiness came in miles, not inches. His expressiveness was what made Poe stare at times, gob smacked by the openness.

Dream Finn? Dream Finn had looks that were inscrutable, that Poe ached to ask about but never quite dared to. Dream Finn looked at him like this Finn was now- those lips in an almost straight line, only the slightest tug of a frown, eyes searching Poe for something that Poe would offer up instantly if Finn would only say the word…At best, Poe couldn’t read dream Finn, and at worst was sure that he was getting it all wrong.

The staring got under Poe’s skin, and not in a good way. “What?” He didn’t snap back; he didn’t have the energy to.

“You need to get off this rock, Poe,” Dream Finn said. Poe couldn’t tell if that was an order or just Finn worrying.

“Yeah, I, uh, kinda got that.” Poe chuckled wearily, gesturing at the sky. The sun was starting to rise, and BB-8 was trying to get Poe’s attention. Neither of them were going anywhere, though, so Poe indulged himself for a moment. “But I forgot my map back at HQ so…” Finn didn’t laugh. “Look, I’d love to get home. I’m literally dying to get home. But this isn’t exactly easy to d-”

“It’s going to get bad if you don’t.”

“Bad like ‘crash my ship and can’t fix it’ bad, or ‘giant salivating lizard beast’ bad?”

“Worse.” Definitely Dream Finn, because he sounded _grim_ instead of _frantic_. “You can feel it already, can’t you?”

Sarcasm was on the tip of Poe’s tongue, but he couldn’t speak it, not even to Dream Finn. His humor fell short when he stared back in Finn’s eyes, trying to piece together everything that wasn’t being said. This might have been a hallucination, but the warning felt as real and as solid as the rock that Poe was leaning on.

Poe closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The strange gravity, the weight around him, was almost a comfort. When he opened his eyes, Finn was gone. Poe cursed to himself, shaking his head.

“Hey, buddy,” he raised his voice enough to let BB-8 know he was done talking to himself. “Mind helping me up?”

BB-8 beeped, concerned. “That was, uh, a joke,” Poe said. He shuddered as he stood up, still hearing Dream Finn’s voice in his head. He felt something, all right- but what? He couldn’t say. “A bad one.”


End file.
